Top local Democrats and union leaders used the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday to express their solidarity with Local 1199, the health care workers union that has staged a number of strikes during the past two years in a battle for higher wages.

Senators Schumer and Clinton, the state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, the Reverend Al Sharpton, and even the archbishop of New York, Edward Cardinal Egan, appeared at a Harlem rally with thousands of home health aides who have launched a campaign targeting health care agencies that they say do not pay “livable” wages.

The politicians and labor heavyweights appeared in the bitter cold after an energetic crowd of union members marched up Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard to 125th Street. Speaker after speaker invoked King, saying the slain civil rights leader would have supported the efforts of 1199, a group he is said to have called “my favorite union.”

Rev. Sharpton said that if King were alive, “he’d be marching through the streets of Harlem with home care workers asking for a livable wage.”

The rally also brought together an intriguing mix of Democrats looking to court the city’s labor unions. Mr. Spitzer was laughing and joking as he stood on the same stage as the Nassau County executive, Thomas Suozzi, who last week formed a fund-raising committee with an eye toward challenging the attorney general for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.

After speaking to the crowd, Mr. Suozzi signed a commemorative version of a bill boosting wages in Nassau County. The new law, dubbed “the living wage” bill, requires companies with county contracts to pay employees at least $9.50 an hour in 2007. The minimum rate jumps to $10.50 in 2008 and $12.50 in 2010.

Mr. Suozzi made no mention of the governor’s race, and several minutes later, the head of 1199, Dennis Rivera, introduced Mr. Spitzer as “someone who many of us believe will be the next governor of the state of New York.”

Mr. Spitzer also briefly stood alongside Roger Toussaint, the president of the Transport Workers Union, just weeks after the attorney general filed an injunction to prevent Mr. Toussaint from leading his union on an illegal strike.

“I pledge to you, when I am fortunate enough to become governor, we will get a decent wage for every man and woman in this state,” Mr. Spitzer said to cheers yesterday. “We will do it because it is just, and it is right.”

Local 1199, a branch of the Service Employees International Union, says it represents more than 270,000 health care workers from Boston to Washington D.C., including more than 23,000 home health aides. The union held a three-day strike in 2004 to pressure agencies to increase wages for home health aides to $10 an hour, from $7. Several agencies agreed, resulting in contracts affecting more than 14,000 workers. Since then, the union has been targeting companies individually. More than 1,000 home health aides walked out last month against the PeopleCare agency before agreeing to the city comptroller’s offer of mediation. The workers and PeopleCare reached an agreement earlier this month providing for increased pay and health benefits, a spokesman for 1199, Christopher Fleming, said.

Yesterday’s rally also coincides with an advocacy campaign, including an advertising blitz, announced last week by 1199. Mr. Fleming said the union hopes to pressure home health agencies to adhere to a set of operating principles, including higher pay, health benefits, and increased training for workers. The guidelines, endorsed by more than 150 local political, labor, and religious leaders, are named after the new City Council speaker, Christine Quinn, a longtime ally of the union.

“The City Council stands with all of you united in your struggle for economic justice,” Ms. Quinn told the health workers at yesterday’s rally. She later added, “If we allow all of you to be ripped off by these companies, then we are not living up to the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King.”

Also invoking King was Cardinal Egan, who repeated the famous quote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

The cardinal said he could not “dare” to propose what wages or health benefits should be, but said he supported the efforts of the home health aides.

“From all reports, my dear friends, home health care workers are woefully underpaid,” Cardinal Egan said. “They serve those most in need, and they are themselves among those most in need.”

His sentiments were echoed later by Mr. Schumer and Mrs. Clinton, who blamed Washington for the health workers’ plight. “Never has so much been done for so few who need so little,” Mrs. Clinton said, a refrain Mr. Spitzer later repeated.